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Kerem Öktem: Turkish Intellectuals Who Have Recognized The Armenian Genocide

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101 turkish intelectBy Hambersom Aghbashian

This is article No. 101 of this serial.

The first article was published in “Nor Or” on January 9, 2014, ( Orhan Pamuk, one of Turkey’s most prominent novelists, screenwriter, academic and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature). Since then ” Nor Or ” continued publishing this serial weekly, except during newspaper’s yearly vacations, where it highlighted 100 of  courageous Turkish intellectuals,  advocates of justice and human rights, who have recognized the reality of the Armenian Genocide. Many of them were threatened, others were sentenced for different periods of imprisonment or fines, many imprisoned, some suffered financial loses , others fled the country, etc., but they continued and still continue asking for justice and demand their  government to recognize the Armenian Genocide.  The first 50 articles were compiled in Part-1 of  our published book “Turkish Intellectuals Who Have Recognized the Reality of the Armenian Genocide” and the second 50 articles will be included in Part-2 ,  and the list goes on.

Kerem Öktem is a Professor of Southeast Europe and Modern Turkey and Deputy Director at the Centre of Southeast European Studies, the University of Graz, Austria which he has joined in September 2014. Before that, he was Open Society Research Fellow at the European Studies Centre, University of Oxford, where he earned his Master degree in Modern Middle Eastern Studies at the Faculty for Oriental Studies in 2001, and  completed his PhD at the school of Geography, Oxford in 2006, with a thesis on nation building in Turkey as a socio-spatial project (Geographies of Nationalism). He is a longstanding research associate of the program for Southeast European Studies at Oxford (SEESOX), and alumni of the Mercator-IPC Fellow at Sabanci University, Istanbul. In addition to his academic publications, he is also a regular contributor to Open Democracy and several media outlets. Prof. Öktem’s main interests lie in the connection between domestic politics and foreign policy, nationalism, and the politics of ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities and social movements in Turkey. He is an expert in Middle Eastern Studies, Turkish Politics, and International Relations. (1) (2)

  In his paper titled “The Nation’s Imprint: Demographic Engineering and the Change of Toponymes in Republican Turkey,” Kerem Öktem mentioned:”When the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) declared the deportation law for ‘those opposing the government in times of war’ on 27 May 1915, more than a million Armenians, Syriac Christians, and some Kurdish communities were forced into exile and destruction. In only a few weeks, the government initiated the name change of evacuated villages (Dündar 2001: 65). At the same time, some of these villages were swiftly resettled with Muslim refugees, pouring into the country from the Balkans and the easternmost provinces under Russian occupation. In a directive, the Chief of the General Staff and one of the three leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), Enver Pasha, declared that: “It has been decided that provinces, districts, towns, villages, mountains and rivers, which are named in languages belonging to non-Muslim nations such as Armenian, Greek or Bulgarian, will be transformed into Turkish.”(3)

On June 25, 2014, Kerem Oktem and Christopher Sisserian wrote an article under the title “Turkey’s Armenian opening: towards 2015″, the following are some abstracts: ” In recent years, an increasing number of individuals and civil-society organizations has begun to engage with the heritage and history of the country’s once substantial Armenian communities and their violent end. This had little impact on government policy until 23 April 2014, when the office of PM Erdogan released a letter offering condolences to the grandchildren of those that perished. This statement was significant; it was the first time a Turkish PM had addressed the issue of Armenian suffering and loss. Turkey’s breach with Israel, whose camp in the United States was once enlisted to do the dirty work of lobbying against recognition of the genocide, meant that this route was no longer open to Ankara. Hence Erdogan’s letter. It is a masterly work that manages to appear to talk about the Armenian genocide without actually recognizing it; that insinuates reconciliation without acknowledging injustice; and that uses words of condolence, while warning its recipients not to establish “a pecking order of suffering” (i.e. not to insist on recognition). (4)

Under the title ” Professors discuss denial of Armenian Genocide, ” Aaron Lewis wrote on November 8, 2015, in” The  Daily Northwestern”: ” In remembrance of 100 years since the Armenian Genocide, professors from four different universities spoke out against denial of the genocide as part of “Denial and Memory,” a conference held at Northwestern on Friday at the Northwestern University campus in Evanston, Illinois, USA, by the Buffett Institute of Global Studies’ Keyman Modern Turkish Studies. Mustafa Aksakal, Rachel Goshgarian, Kerem Ӧktem and Barbara Lyons, where the main speakers. Kerem Ӧktem, a professor at the University of Graz in Austria, discussed memory versus recognition of the genocide and ideas like the Turkish government’s denial of the genocide. He also talked about the connection between societal power groups and recognition of the genocide. “With very little reach out in society, it is important to see how many sides can exist in society,” he said. “Denialists are losing ground.” (5)

Prof.Kerem Ӧktem is the author and co-author of many books including “World War I and the End of Ottoman Empire: From the Balkan War to the Armenian Genocide“, “Angry Nation: Turkey since 1989”, (2011), “Turkey’s Engagement with Modernity (2009)”, “Another Empire? Turkey’s new foreign policy in the 2000s”, (2012) and many others.

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1- http://www.suedosteuropa.uni-graz.at/en/people/univ-prof-drkerem-%C3%B6ktemUniv

2- http://ipc.sabanciuniv.edu/en/fellow/kerem-oktem/

3- https://ejts.revues.org/2243#tocto1n2

4- https://www.opendemocracy.net/kerem-oktem-christopher-sisserian/turkeys-armenian-opening-towards-2015

5- http://dailynorthwestern.com/2015/11/08/campus/professors-discuss-denial-of-armenian-genocide/

Armenian Genocide exhibition items vandalized in Germany

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f56c5a2a4b816e_56c5a2a4b81a5.thumb

Photo by: German-Armenian Society

Unknown individuals in Germany have vandalized items of an Armenian Genocide exhibition.
In a statement on Wednesday, the German-Armenian Society (Deutsch-Armenische Gesellschaft) says that the assault was committed on January 20.
The items were on display at a college in the town of Aachen which hosted the exhibition “1915-2015: Armenian Architecture and Genocide”.  It was arranged as part of an exhibition series entitled “Fatherland”.
The police have been on the incident.
The Society’s president, Raffi Kantian, described the recent assault as exceptional, noting that the exhibition had been held successfully without incidents in different cities and town across Germany.
The Society says it is still critical of a protest note released earlier by two Aachen-based groups which expressed the Turkish authorities’ position and blamed the Society of being biased. “But the vandalism by unknown individuals is totally unacceptable; it is a disservice to those groups’ objectives,” reads the statement.

 

Armenian Genocide denial built on Turkey’s lost sense of reality: scholar

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205903Turkish historian Ümit Kurt gave a lecture at Fresno State’s Alice Peters Auditorium that probed why Turkey still denies the Armenian Genocide, the Fresno Bee reports.

The free lecture was organized by the Armenian Studies Program. This was the third lecture hosted by the program during the spring 2016 semester.

Kurt recalls how he first heard in his early 20s of the Armenian historical presence in his country – a presence the Turkish government has spent decades trying to erase.

Some societies are capable of openly discussing their history, Kurt said. Others struggle “because their past and present is intertwined in a way that causes them to lose their sense of reality,” Kurt said. “In Turkish society, this (lost) sense of reality is most obvious in the case of denying, or not acknowledging, the Armenian Genocide.

“Confronting the past is a societal problem, rather than an individual one,” Kurt said.

During 1915, the Ottoman Turkish army committed massacres of Armenians, Kurt said, and deported many under harsh circumstances that constituted an intentional effort to rid the country of Armenians.

After the events of World War I, the modern Turkish republic wanted to create a new national identity, Kurt said. In the creation of that new identity, government leaders sought to forget the past and construct a new past, in which “we Turks did not murder Armenians – Armenians murdered us,” Kurt said.

“Because Turkey founded its existence on the absence of “the other,” every conversation on its existence inspires fear and anxiety,” Kurt said. “The chief difficulty in speaking on the Armenian issue in Turkey lies in this existence-absence dilemma.”

Kurt added that the government of Turkey is also afraid of the reparations and restitution they would have to pay if they accepted that the Turkey’s actions in 1915 constituted genocide.

In response to an audience question, Kurt said it was unlikely the government of Turkey would ever admit to the genocide. “Of course, I hope I’m wrong,” he said.

Kurt is a doctoral candidate at Clark University in Massachusetts and was a Kazan Research Scholar at Fresno State during the fall 2015 semester.

Related links:

The Fresno Bee. Turkish historian: Denial of Armenian genocide based on lost ‘sense of reality’
The Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide (1915-23) was the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was characterized by massacres, and deportations involving forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of deaths reaching 1.5 million.

The majority of Armenian Diaspora communities were formed by the Genocide survivors.

Present-day Turkey denies the fact of the Armenian Genocide, justifying the atrocities as “deportation to secure Armenians”. Only a few Turkish intellectuals, including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk and scholar Taner Akcam, speak openly about the necessity to recognize this crime against humanity.

The Armenian Genocide was recognized by Uruguay, Russia, France, Lithuania, the Italian Chamber of Deputies, majority of U.S. states, parliaments of Greece, Cyprus, Argentina, Belgium and Wales, National Council of Switzerland, Chamber of Commons of Canada, Polish Sejm, Vatican, European Parliament and the World Council of Churches.

Armenian Genocide mastermind’s own account of the massacres: article

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harut-sassounian-small-1BY Harut Sassounian

Publisher of the California Courier Harut Sassounian presents the article “Talaat’s Personal Account of The Armenian Massacres,” unveiling excerpts from the Genocide ringleader’s memoirs.

The article reads:

In my last week’s column, I reported that Talaat Pasha, the mastermind of the Armenian Genocide, had told British intelligence officer Aubrey Herbert in 1921 that he had written “a memorandum on the Armenian massacres.”

I would like now to present brief excerpts from Talaat’s lengthy account published in the November 1921 issue of Current History, the monthly magazine of the New York Times, titled: “Posthumous Memoirs of Talaat Pasha,” and subtitled: “The former Grand Vizier’s own account, written shortly before his assassination, of why and how Turkey entered the war – Secret alliance that preceded the conflict – Causes of the Armenian massacres as stated by the man who ordered them.”

In an introductory note, Current History editors explain how they obtained a copy of this revealing report: “…After Talaat’s death, the manuscript passed into the possession of his wife, who remained in Germany; she permitted the Paris correspondent of Vakit to reproduce the most interesting portions of it. These have been translated from Turkish for Current History by M. Zekeria, a native of Constantinople. They represent about fifty pages of the original manuscript, the opening sentence of which, “I do not tell all the truth, but all I tell is truth,” aroused a great sensation in Turkey.”

In his memoirs, as in his interview with Aubrey Herbert, Talaat tries to exonerate himself by blaming everyone else — Armenians, Russians, even Turks — for the Armenian massacres. He does not deny “the deportations of the Armenians, in some localities of the Greeks, and in Syria of some of the Arabs,” but claims that such reports “were exceedingly exaggerated.” Talaat then adds: “in saying this, I do not mean to deny the facts.”

The former Grand Vizier confesses: “I admit that we deported many Armenians from our eastern provinces, but we never acted in this matter upon a previously prepared scheme. The responsibility for these acts falls first of all upon the deported people themselves. Russia, in order to lay hand on our eastern provinces, had armed and equipped the Armenian inhabitants of this district, and had organized strong Armenian bandit forces in the said area.”

Attempting to repair his tarnished image, Talaat acknowledges the Turkish brutalities against Armenians: “I admit also that the deportation was not carried out lawfully everywhere. In some places unlawful acts were committed… I confess it.”

Talaat proceeds to provide excuses for not pursuing perpetrators of the Armenian massacres who “were short-sighted, fanatic, and yet sincere in their belief.”

To set the record straight, Talaat’s claims that Armenians stabbed Turkey in the back during WWI are completely false. Minister of War Enver Pasha, Commander-in-Chief of the Ottoman Armed Forces, in a letter to the Bishop of Konya, praised the bravery of Turkish-Armenian soldiers fighting against the Russian Army in the winter of 1914-1915.

Ironically, Talaat’s assertion that his government would have taken brutal actions against Armenians even at “a time of peace” reconfirms long-standing Turkish genocidal practices as previously demonstrated by the Hamidian and Adana massacres of Armenians which were carried out when there were no wars.

A book published in Turkish in Turkey: The Armenian Genocide, 100 years after

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arton121782-397x300“The Armenian Genocide, 100 Years Later” published in Turkish in Turkey by publishing “Ilitishim” shows number of speeches made in the symposium organized in Paris in 2015 at the Sorbonne, the EHESS in the Library of France and the Shoah Memorial by CSI, with the sponsorship and support of the mission of the CFC in 2015. According to the site Akunq.net, the book has taken the best interventions of the leading specialists of the Armenian Genocide, which met last year in Paris. Their theme is the Armenian Genocide by Turkey but also that of other minorities also victims of Ottoman barbarism in 2015. Many other topics related to human rights in Turkey are covered in this book.

Krikor Amirzayan

FM Nalbandyan: Armenian Genocide gained worldwide recognition

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f56b0b5e7d6d73_56b0b5e7d6db0.thumb“Strangely, it is not Armenia that sets preconditions for Armenian-Turkish normalization, but Turkey – the successor of the Ottoman Empire that committed genocide,” Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandyan told reporters today in response to a question about what should be expected amid Turkish FM’s claims that Armenian-Turkish relations would not be normalized without a settlement of the Karabakh conflict.

In his words, it would be strange to look for logic in recent rhetoric of Turkish diplomacy concerning not only Armenia-related issues, but other problems as well.

As regards the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide and the question about whether commemorative events will be held at the same pace this year or the centennial was the reason for such large-scale commemorations, Nalbandyan noted that in 2015 the events were audible throughout the world.

“On the 50th anniversary of the Genocide, a dark page in our history, the tragedy was not much discussed outside Armenian circles. But now we can say that the Armenian Genocide has gained worldwide recognition thanks to common efforts that the Armenians have made during these years. Consistent work will not stop after the anniversary. We will continue consistent efforts with the Armenian people and the international community to achieve recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide and prevent new genocides,” the minister said.

 

Source Panorama.am

Portrait of a Turkish-American, denial of the Armenian Genocide

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arton121445-300x397By Harut Sassounian, California Courier

January 26, 2016

While Armenian Americans closely following the sinister efforts of Turkey and its lobbying firms, they do not pay too much attention to some Turkish Americans, or they appear in the organization chart of the Turkish government, or they undertake in turn acts of propaganda, driven by unbridled patriotism. One of these is the Turkish American Oya Bain, described in a recent interview with the Turkish denialist website HistoryofTruth.com as “one of the most active people in the Turkish diaspora in the United States.” She is a member of the Board of the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA), Assembly of Turkish Associations of America, a coalition of 60 Turkish associations in the United States.

Bain claims that after many years of ATAA’s efforts to organize “lectures, conferences, programs on false Armenian claims across the US in 2015 [year of the centenary of the Armenian Genocide], the frequency and The intensity of such programs have achieved the highest levels. “ She added that there was a significant “increase in the number of professionals and serious academics who study objectively the Ottoman period in the time of the First World War and which issued their report without the Armenian threats and intimidation of previous years”.

Curiously, Bain uses the term “we have serious specialists” to designate the deniers Ed Erickson authors, Michael Gunter, Guenter Lewy, Tal Buenos Jeremy Salt, Norman Stone, Christofer Gunn, Maxime Gauin and Pat Walsh. What exactly drives Bain to say “we have”? This phraseology is undoubtedly a “kiss of death” for any self-respecting intellectual!

Responding to a question on relations between Armenians and Turks in Washington DC, Bain took the opportunity to attack the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA): “Yes, we have friends in the Armenian community. Turkish Armenians are warm, friendly and they like us. By cons, we have in front of us ANCA, a consistently negative and hostile organization prejudices, exaggerations and outright lies in the media, political circles and the university. “ It also does not appreciate my weekly column: “Recently, an article of 20 October 2015 Harut Sassounian extremist author was entitled ‘For the Denial of Genocide is Forbidden, the [European] Court Incite Armenians Committing Acts of Violence. “

Ignoring the millions of dollars spent each year by the Turkish government to manipulate politicians, journalists, writers and so-called experts, Bain exaggerates the modest budget of ANCA and the Armenian Assembly, describing it as false “well funded, installed in luxury offices, with a large staff … It is undoubtedly an industry.”

Bain says proudly that the size of the Friendship Group with Turkey has increased from 62 members to 151 members in 2005. Recognizing that money buys votes, as was the case of the former Speaker of the House of Representatives Dennis Hastert [photo], she states: “We do not have as many votes in the Armenian communities Greek, but we can provide funding and support of volunteers. “ Bath indulges in what Senator Menendez and Representatives Pallone and Pelosi, describing them as “members [of Congress] fans who are very rigid and very hostile to the Turks.”

Seasoned propagandist, Bain said his organization tries to convince – it should say abusing – members of Congress by presenting their “a message of reconciliation with Armenia.” She cites such “support the ATAA for protocols between Armenia and Turkey in 2009, and particularly the formation of a commission of historians to study targets the conflict between Armenians and Turks.” She conveniently forgets to mention that Turkey has continued to refuse to ratify the protocols!

Recognizing that the ATAA was created in 1979 by Sukru Elekda, while Turkish Ambassador to the United States, Bain inadvertently reveals the intense political activity of the ATAA in violation of its statutes nonprofit organization! She presses with unconsciousness groups ATAA ‘to leave the dangerous state of mind of a type 501-c-3 [nonprofit] hampering political activity’. ‘This behavior has seriously hampered our efforts to fight the Armenian claims in the region’. An appeal should be filed with the IRS [the IRS] to restrict lobbying activities of ATAA or terminate.

It is possible that other ATAA violates US laws. Calling it “excellent” relations between the ATAA and the Turkish Embassy in Washington DC, Bain recognizes that successive Turkish ambassadors in Washington contributed “a lot of support” for ATAA, as the organization of “a lot fabulous evening fundraiser at the Embassy. “ It does not seem to realize that it magnifies the revelations could cause problems to the ATAA requiring registration as a “foreign agent” with the Justice Department of the USA.

In his concluding remarks, Bath accuses US media “bias, censorship of any positive event from Turkey, veiled discrimination”. She then adds: “The bias of the media has risen during the April 24, 2015, the centennial year of Armenian claims … It will probably take another 100 years to reverse and correct misconceptions.” Bath vain hope that “in the coming 100 years Armenian propaganda and lies will be removed and a more balanced perception of Turkish and Armenian tragedy emerge, respecting the suffering and deaths of the two people in 1915. I think that the Armenian tragedy is now so much depreciated vulgar propaganda it can go lower … One wishes that the internet will finally be rid of all the rubbish of false information on the Armenian claims . I am hopeful for 100 years to come. The tide goes out. “

It is imperative that the Armenians counteract campaigns not only of the Turkish government lobbying, but also those of ‘lone wolves’ as Oya Bain, without exceeding the rules of civility and law.

Translation for Gilbert Béguian Armenews

Wednesday, January 27, 2016,
Jean Eckian © armenews.com

Armenian National Archive to publicize copies of Ottoman documents

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Amatuni-Virabyan03-620x300(armradio.am) The Armenian National Archive will publish archive documents related to the Armenian Genocide and World War II this year, Director of the National Archive Amatuni Virabyan told a press conference today.

He said the copies of original Ottoman documents and their translations will also be made public. Most of the documents refer to the properties of the Armenian Church.

Virabyan said the Archive has undertaken the digitalization of the documents. The digital copies will also be kept at the National Archive.

Amatuni Virabyn said thanks to cooperation with national archives of other countries they acquire the copies of all Armenia-related documents.

TURKEY Back in 1915 Cengiz Aktar “Armenia Genocide”

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arton120707-480x320Under the title “Enter 1915” (1) December 31, 2014, I wrote an article to imagine how the ceremonies of the centenary of the Armenian Genocide could happen, and at the same time, imagine how the Centennial curse our inability to face the facts could change.

At the end of this article, which I reproduce some excerpts below *, I expressed the hope that the centenary could be an historic opportunity to get rid of old habits, understand the “Other” to engage in group therapy. But this hope has remained vain. Instead, the 1915 curse ruled over the whole country. Today, Turkey is suffering from a state of total insanity.

When I say curse, I am referring to any parapsychological observation. I think perhaps that we should not underestimate the weight of the kingdom of dying souls. I would refer rather to the following truth: as long as we refuse to face the facts of this massive crime of genocide and that we’re not absolved, rendering full justice to the little children of the victims, we will pay the price evils that result. This is a fundamental ethical issue. In fact, genocide is a crime of such magnitude that it can not be compared to individual and collective crimes committed ordinarily. But for a company able to “digest” genocide, ordinary crimes are easily accepted. This is how we live evil.

1915 has not been on the national agenda in 2015 as it should be, because of the intensity of the repression that took place last year, and because of the general lack of knowledge in society ; this ignorance is closely linked to our culture of injustice and impunity of a century old.

Let me illustrate this with an example: one of the frequently given explanations about the fate suffered by the Kurds these days is that their persecution was never punished since the installation of the republic. But nobody dares to remember that the Armenians and other non-Muslim groups were persecuted before and that Armenians were particularly oppressed by the Kurds.

A century ago that Turkey is in decline; at the turn of the 21st century, it wallows in the mud and inevitably towards fascism.

“Entering 1915”

“Who knows ? All this evil that haunts us, the endless massacres of mass and our inability to cure illnesses, may be due to an old curse of a century and a lie of the century. Do we ever know ? This is perhaps a spell cast by Armenians – children, women and men civilians – who died, buried still wailing. This is perhaps the storm created by our souls still dying spectra of all our fellow citizens abused, those Greeks and Syriacs including, later, those of Alevis and Kurds.

Perhaps the responsibilities of massacres that have never been sought after 1915 and whose “price” was never paid they are now demanded in different ways by the grandchildren? Curses, launched to the lives taken, stolen lives, homes looted, destroyed churches, schools and extorted seized property … come back they? “May God make you pay for it by you and all your descendants.” Do we pay the price for all the injustices done so far? Payment is it by our refusal to confront our past sins or our cynicism, become common because of our chronic indulgence hypocrisy? It is as if our society was decaying for a century, rotting all around her.

Despite the century-old curse, in 2015 will happen without debate “Are there really was genocide? “Receives a response. We look at how those in power grow every effort to cover this shame and delay any movement towards a confrontation. If it were in their power, they escamoteraient 2015, altogether. The denialist prose which consists of three shriveled arguments, which are summed up in the uprising, collaboration with the enemy, and victimization – it is the Armenians who killed us – will continue to be repeated like parrots repeating in a series of conferences. And we will dance on our own music. On 24 and 25 April 2015, an official ceremony will be held at the Anzac Day in Gallipoli, without any connection with the Genocide. And we will hear abundant stories about heroism in the Dardanelles. But we will not find anyone to listen to our speeches.

How many curses are we still exposed before we are likely:

- To recognize the bloody process of building our nation?

- To learn and remember how a harmless people, hardworking, efficient, talented and peaceful was destroyed by the people of the warriors of Anatolia and to feel empathy for their grandchildren who remember?

- To measure the cruelty suffered by the unfortunate Armenians asking “Our ehir Asdvadz? “(Where were you, God?), In the summer of 1915, as dark and cold as death?

- To realize that the population of Armenians who dénombraient million in the Ottoman Empire in 1915 increased to virtually zero today. The Armenians who remain either hid their true identity, or have converted to Islam.

- To finish with the question “Was it genocide or not? “And the question” who killed who? “And listen only to our conscience?

- To admit, as explained Hrant Dink, that this was a genocide in all its aspects, and a considerable loss of civilization?

- To realize that the greatest loss of this country is that the non-Muslim citizens of these lands are gone?

- To understand how the genocide – that the Armenians of those dark days denominated Great Catastrophe (Medz Yeghern) – is a disaster that does not belong only to Armenians but to the whole country?

- To find that the loss of our non-Muslim citizens were killed, exiled or forced to flee equivalent to a loss of intellectual, cultural, loss of civilization, to a deficit of bourgeois population?

- To assess the scourge of goods, confiscated property and abducted children?

- To adequately understand the wisdom of the author Yasar Kemal, who wrote: “another bird can not thrive in an abandoned nest, and he who destroys a nest can have nest, oppression called oppression.”

- And even realize that those who reject the above points do so only because they lost in the Genocide part of their wisdom?

The Armenian Genocide is the Great Catastrophe of Anatolia, and the mother of taboos on these lands. His curse will continue to haunt us as long as we avoid talking about it, to recognize, understand and evaluate. Its centenary offers us a historic opportunity to rid ourselves of our habits, understand the Other, and start group therapy. “

Zaman

Cengiz Aktar

January 6, 2016

(1) read in full, in English, by the www.todayszaman.com/columnist/cengi-z-aktar/entering-1915_368487.html link

Translation Gilbert Béguian

http://www.todayszaman.com/columnist/cengi-z-aktar/re-entering-1915_408938.html

Armenian: Newsmaker of the Year: Community marks the Armenian Genocide 100 Year

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The Genocide Memorial is blessed at a candlelight vigil in the parking lot of the Glendale Civic Auditorium last April after a ceremony sponsored by United Young Armenians. (Tim Berger / Staff Photographer)

The Genocide Memorial is blessed at a candlelight vigil in the parking lot of the Glendale Civic Auditorium last April after a ceremony sponsored by United Young Armenians. (Tim Berger / Staff Photographer)

By Arin Mikailian Contact Reporter

It was hard this past spring to look around Glendale without being reminded it’s been 100 years since the first genocide of the 20th century.

The events on April 24 and the days and weeks leading up to it contained memorials, lectures and a march through the streets of Hollywood.

More than 1.5 million Armenians died at the hands of the Ottoman Empire starting in 1915.

Many of the survivors’ descendants live not only in Glendale but surrounding Southland cities as well.